The revival's best chance to work is if it is sold as a comedy vehicle for Miranda. That's how it worked for Larry Grayson when he took over from Brucie. With Sir Bruce, it was always about how bad (or occasionally, good) the contestants were at the games. Larry took part in the games and was as bad or worse than the contestants were.

Steve Williams may be able to correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that LGGG was initially as successful as BFGG in the ratings and beat Brucie's lavish Big Night series in the Saturday ratings. But ratings slipped for Larry when Game For A Laugh turned up.

People need to steady on here, Harry Hill given creative freedom with his more obscure wacky comedy doesn't immediately mean massive ratings. If he was doing TV Burp then the reaction may be justified, that he will crush Cowell and all that usual nonsense, but many of his projects both on and off screen have resulted in fairly middle of the road audiences. I doubt it will air on a Saturday, probably Friday nights.

It isn't necessarily a massive embarrassment that ITV have let him slip away. His other projects he did on ITV rated lower than TV Burp as viewers tuned in expecting something like TV Burp and got his more wacky formats.


TV OD on ITV2 was a bit like TV Burp. It mostly aired across the World Cup though so it went unnoticed. So unnoticed we didn't have someone declaring it ITV2's massive new format and gloating at 'yet another flop' etc. The ratings were never mentioned, in fact I don't think it was mentioned here at all.

Wow the Generation Game coming back! Now that I am looking forward to!

The BBC has literally no money whatsoever for presentation thesedays.

Hence we've got the very tired BBC1 idents, no special idents for special programmes, the last two years of very poor Christmas idents, and anything special like 'BBC1 loves Spring' look like something knocked together by a digital channel.

We only got a special ident for the Commonwealth Games probably because it came from the BBC Scotland budget and was basically some footage with some post production and the soundtrack from another ident added over the top.

People were initially assuming that Harry Hill was presenting the Gen Game because The Gen Game and Harry Hill appeared in the same sentence. But since then it was speculated that he might host a Saturday night gameshow before it was revealed he was doing a scripted comedy for BBC One instead. There's been no confirmation as to his ITV status. These days stars tend to work for whoever offers them work - unless you're Ant and Dec! Has he actually left ITV? I agree with you though Andy. Asides from Burp, his comedy style is rarely massive audience grabbers.

Has the CBB launch always been down to finish at 11:20? That's rather late for a Monday night and is likely to impact the full average (particularly as the last 5-10 minutes of launch shows tends to be live streaming).

Nope, it is very late, and long too. 2h 15 mins for how many going in? Between 12-14 only. There will be breaks every 10 mins!

I think Harry Hill will have more luck with Stars In Their Eyes. Comedy is difficult to get right and away from TV Burp his comedy style doesn't rate well.

Has there been any confirmation Harry Hill or even Stars in their Eyes is going to air on Itv next year? There were tabloid rumours but nothing confirmed.

You're right Andy.

Harry Hill's comedy was a perfect fit for TV Burp as it had popular, mainstream programmes to bounce off. Thirty minutes of Harry Hill is something that works on Channel 4 or BBC2. It doesn't attract the mainstream masses.

They are timeless.

The media picked up on this report from Neil Midgeley at Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilmidg...-hill-as-host/

But no confirmation from itv

Larry Grayson's Generation Game had the highest rating in the programme's history during the ITV strike of 1979. It was Game For A Laugh, which Bill Cotton turned down at The BBC, that would beat The Gen Game and lead to its demise.

Another negative for its ratings prospects. Fantastic.

14 according to the Daily Star. I guess it got something right for once.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BvO4jofIEAAVrYY.jpg

No, nothing from ITV on it.

Maybe they were planning on saving the news for the TV Festival in a few days time ?

This should be a big week for commissioning news and so on.

Larry Grayson's version of the Gen Game attracted 18-19 million viewers at its heiight and ITV struggled against it. Yet Game For A Laugh started to eat into its ratings in 1981 and killed it. Also it was ten years old by then and maybe viewers fancied something new.
GFAL was huge when it was on Saturdays, but the move to Sundays and the change in personnel killed it in 1985. Also ITV wanted to be more upmarket and were badly rattled by BBC 1's revival under Michael Grade.

I'll post you some bubble wrap so you can protect it. Why must you regard every post about CBB as a negative even though some posters are just posting facts?

I think Dancc was referring to the fact that the programme originally had a scheduled finish time of 23:05, which as your post alludes to, has been changed to 23:20.

Ah! Sorry, then I misunderstood dancc's post and as such apologise accordingly. I can see why Dancc was concerned in this instance. Sorry Dancc.

So a spring launch for "The Generation Game" then in 2015 as "The Voice UK" is until March.

This has been reported before, there was talk of a pilot being made at Granada more than a year ago but nothing came of it.Treat with caution......

CBB/ BB is big for Channel 5, but just no longer big enough for the four main channels. It has its fans, makes money for Channel 5, but it's days of filling the tabloids and being a watercooler topic are behind it. However, it does seem for both versions, a hardcore support of 1-2 million will support it whatever and probably makes sense for a smaller channel.